Page 8 of Delivered and Devoured
“You know her?”
“Used to fly long-haul at OOPS. She left a couple of months ago. On good terms — Mother’s the kind who’ll always help out family, and Flossie’s family.” I sign the form. Slide the stylus back into its clip. “How long has SNAG been open?”
“Three weeks and four days. The bunting hasn’t gone up yet.”
“And you’re —”
“Day one. This morning.”
I stop with the datapad halfway back to her.
“Day one.”
“Day one. Eleven minutes into my interview, she abandoned the questions and gave me a working trial instead. This is the trial.”
I look at her. Properly. Three weeks and four days. First hire. Working trial. Flossie does not miss — Flossie has the cleanest read on people I’ve ever known, and Flossie picked this woman out of a chair on her first morning and put her on a cargo handoff for a pod Mother flagged personally, which means Flossie saw something in eleven minutes that I am —
My ridges pulse darker. I lose the thread.
“Sign here for SNAG,” I say. I tap the line.
She reaches for the stylus. We’re standing close enough now that I can hear her breathing, the small catch and release of someone working hard to keep it even. The hold’s warmth has loaded the air between us and the warm-sweet thing my tongue keeps tasting is thicker now, layered with something tea-adjacent and something that might be soap and underneath both of them the part that is just her, and the part that is just her is going to be the death of me. Her fingers brush mine on the handover and her breath hitches — small, almost nothing, the sort of catch you’d miss if you weren’t paying attention — and I am, regrettably, paying attention.
Yes.
She signs. Quick, neat handwriting. Lorri Vance. I take the datapad back. Our hands brush again.
The pod chooses this exact moment to make its move.
The hum shifts. Not a quarter tone; a full step, audible to her, audible to anyone, and the diagnostic strip flares amber for half a second before steadying back to green like nothing happened. Lorri’s head whips around.
“Was that —”
“HORATIO.”
“On it, Captain. The cradle reports stable. The cradle is, I should reiterate, lying.”
Lorri takes a half-step toward the cradle. “Should we be —”
“No,” I say, at the exact moment she says, “Should I —” and reaches for the diagnostic console.
I move.
I don’t think about moving. My hand closes over hers on the console rim before her fingers have made contact with anything that will object to being touched, and I’m behind her, close enough that my chest is at her shoulder blade and I can feel the heat radiating off the back of her neck. Her hand under mine is small and warm. The entire length of my forearm is pressed along hers because that’s how the geometry worked out, and the ridges along my arm are about three shades darker than they were two minutes ago, and the warm-sweet scent at the nape of her neck is so close to my mouth I could taste it without trying, and there is nothing to do about any of it.
“Don’t touch the panel,” I say, into her ear. Quieter than I meant to. Closer than I meant to.
She has gone perfectly still.
“Why,” she says. Also quiet.
“Because the cradle is sensitive, and I don’t yet know what it’s sensitive to, and I would prefer not to find out by way of your hand.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moves.
